


And This Shall Be a Sign

by teand



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M, obligatory mention of tentacle sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-16
Updated: 2009-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-31 12:12:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/343931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teand/pseuds/teand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, it isn't the end of the world. Sometimes, it's <i>nice</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And This Shall Be a Sign

"Everyone outside! Now!"

Ianto was half into his coat even before Jack's command had begun to echo back from the curved roof of the Hub. "What is it?"

Hands shoved into his greatcoat's pockets, Jack rocked forward and grinned. "It's a surprise." Then the grin morphed into a puzzled frown. "Where is everyone?"

"Tosh and Gwen are investigating those floating lights down on the headland and Janet's nose was running like a drain this morning so Owen's down in the cells."

Jack looked intrigued. "Doing what?"

"Didn't ask. Don't want to know. At any event, there's only me."

"Even better. You won't need that," Jack added as Ianto reached for his sidearm. "It's not that kind of a surprise."

"And yet it's amazing how often not that kind of surprise becomes exactly that kind of surprise," Ianto muttered as he crossed the Hub. Up close, he could see that the shoulders of Jack's coat were damp. "Is it raining?"

Dimples flashed. "Nope."

Jack was clearly in a mood. Deciding it was still a little early in the adventure for eye-rolling, Ianto settled for a sigh, a wave of one hand, and a neutral, "Lead on."

"McDuff? I met him, you know, Shakespeare." Jack turned and walked backward for a few paces, giving Ianto the full effect of some remarkably salacious eyebrow movement. "It's true what they said."

"And what was that?"

"What would you like it to be?"

Oh yes, Jack was in a mood. But Ianto hadn't heard him laugh like that for weeks so he threw in some eyebrow moment of his own just to hear him do it again and stayed closer than was strictly necessary as they exited out into the tourist office.

Only to have Jack suddenly all up in his face, murmuring, "Close your eyes."

"Jack…" Jack's hands were on his shoulders and Jack's bloody 51st Century pheromones were making him a little lightheaded. "…we've been over this. People passing can see in."

"It's not that kind of a surprise either."

"That's really not much of a surprise these days," Ianto told him dryly.

"Someone's getting complacent."

Ianto shrugged. "Someone's getting it regularly."

He leaned forward and actually _was_ surprised when Jack leaned back and said, "Close your eyes."

"Jack…"

"Trust me."

There was only one possible response to that. Ianto closed his eyes.

He kept them closed as Jack guided him through the tourist office, kept them closed as the door opened and a blast of cold air hit him in the face, kept them closed as Jack maneuvered them over the threshold, and kept them closed as he was positioned facing out over the square, Jack a warm presence against his back.

"Okay, open them."

It had been a grey and depressing morning when Ianto'd arrived at work, hardly surprising for February in Cardiff. The clouds had been so low and so oppressive he felt almost claustrophobic and that was saying something considering he spent a good part of his life underground in a secret lair that looked like a cross between a tube station and a boiler room.

Between the time he'd entered the Hub and Jack had arrived to order him out, it had begun to snow. Fat, white, fluffy flakes danced down from silver clouds and covered the square in at least two inches of glistening white. The light seemed almost translucent and the background noise of a busy city had been softened until it almost seemed they were the only two people out in the world.

 _In a good way,_ Ianto hastened to remind himself. Metaphor got tricky when apocalypse became less than theoretical.

He could feel Jack waiting for a response.

"It's beautiful," he said, tipped his head back onto Jack's shoulder, and caught a snowflake on his tongue. "Thank you. It'll probably be all grey slush by tonight and I'd have missed it."

"Couldn't have that." Jack's breath brushed warm over the side of his throat. "Come on." He laced his fingers through Ianto's and dragged him a little further from the buildings. "Lay down."

Ianto dug his heels in. He had to do that sometimes with Jack. He suspected not enough people had. "No."

"All right then." Releasing his hand, Jack threw him a wicked grin then threw himself down on his back. "I'll just do it myself."

"It" where Captain Jack Harkness was concerned could mean any number of things -- all of them interesting, a few of them strenuous, and one or two impossible without an extra arm or a set of tentacles. "It" had never, at least not to this point, referred to snow angels.

"You could have just said," Ianto pointed out, lying down so that the edge of his angel's wing just brushed the edge of Jack's.

Jack's smile was blinding and, against the snow, his eyes were even more brilliant a blue. "Is it my fault you have a remarkably dirty mind?" Ianto lifted his head high enough to shoot him a look intended to remind him of the incident at the teashop and Jack laughed. "It's a fair cop, guv."

There wasn't nearly enough snow for Ianto to forget they were lying in the middle of Millennium Square but as he moved his arms and legs in slow, careful arcs and stared up into the falling flakes, he felt remarkably serene. He'd expected to feel silly but he supposed that working for Torchwood meant his ability to be embarrassed by doing the unexpected in public had been burned out of him. Good thing actually, given Jack.

Who was currently standing over him, holding out a hand.

He let Jack pull him to his feet and they turned together to look down at their handiwork. Snow angels of memory always looked more like there'd been spastic flailing with no recognizable result but these, these had wings and robes and were right over the heart of the Hub. Maybe it was because they'd scraped the snow away down to the cobblestones so there was nothing to ruin when they stood, maybe it was because they were adults and less prone to flailing. Didn't matter. He couldn't stop himself from smiling as he looked down at them.

As he glanced up at Jack a moment later, one of the largest, fluffiest, most cliché snowflakes he'd ever seen tumbled past the end of his eyelashes to land on his cheek. He saw Jack raise a hand to brush it away but by the time fingers touched his face, the snowflake had melted.

Jack rubbed his fingertips over the damp spot, barely touching Ianto's skin, his eyes gone suddenly dark, and his expression saying as clearly as if he'd shouted it out loud, _ephemeral_. Ianto knew he wasn't thinking about the bloody snowflake.

They didn't talk about this. They weren't going to talk about this. Ianto figured he had a good ten, maybe fifteen years before he even caught up to Jack's apparent age and given what they did for a living, his odds of surviving that long were slim.

But sometimes, Jack got himself into a mood.

And the only thing to do then was distract him.

Ianto leaned forward and captured Jack's mouth with his. Jack's lips were cold but beginning to warm when Ianto slipped a hand between them and pushed the handful of snow he'd been holding down the front of Jack's trousers.

And then he ran like hell.

As he skidded around a corner, zigging where Jack zagged, laughing and hearing Jack laugh behind him, he knew that Tosh and Gwen weren't going to find anything dangerous or even challenging out at the point. That Janet had nothing more than a cold and that Owen, for all the bitching he'd do about being a glorified vet, appreciated the chance to play doctor instead of pathologist. He knew that the Rift would stay quiet and that no one would be dropping in from the edges of the galaxy.

It was just that kind of a day.

They had angels looking out for them.

\--end--


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